


In the City Hung with Stars

by yhlee (etothey)



Category: Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/yhlee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kalinda and Alicia meet again in a city ruled by shadows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the City Hung with Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ikindofrock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikindofrock/gifts).



It was late in the forever night, with the stars hanging low and sweet and just out of reach. Sometimes Kalinda thought about shooting their strings and letting them drift down to the tangle of desperate streets and cancer-shaped shelters and the hard chilly angles that shadows made in a world of shadows. She wouldn't have minded bringing a little more light to the otherworld's denizens, the furtive cat-folk and the huddles of water-sievers, the apiarists with their battle-bees. But stars always went out wherever they fell, and the otherworld with its terrors was a vast place, unvanquished by law or light or the lines in between.

"Hello, stranger."

Kalinda would have known that voice inside-out and upside-down, anywhere but here, but it was hard to credit, even so. "Alicia," she said slowly, turning from the balcony, hands loose at her sides. Not smiling, just in case.

Alicia was wearing red so dark it was almost conservative, sensible boots of a slightly brighter hue. Her mouth was brighter yet, but not festively so. She looked predatory, and that wasn't a word Kalinda handed out lightly.

Nor did Kalinda miss the hellsparks dancing just behind Alicia's eyes, red as blood and bleak as justice.

 _Hit her in the heart,_ said the inner voice that accompanied her wherever she went. _You can kill her with bullets or asphyxiation or falling, but the real way to defeat her is through her heart._

Kalinda had always been good at seeing the fissures people carried around with them; it was her best power. It was more immediate in the otherworld, that was all.

"Care to go inside for a drink?" Alicia asked as though nothing had passed between them, nothing of Peter Florrick, nothing of words said and bitten back and swallowed like bitter salt, nothing of nights alone at the bar listening to the silence where the other woman should have been. "I have no idea where they get the wine-of-flowers, but it kicks like a tow truck going down."

"You're talking to me," Kalinda said. "What's changed?"

Alicia came to stand next to her, not too close, not too far away. "Everything's different in Chicago's shadow," she said. She tapped a finger against the railing as a small huddled shape ran for cover, far below. "And nothing's different. Here the monsters have teeth and tentacles instead of guns and bribes, but they feed on the same things. Last week there was a siever child I didn't get to in time..." She fell silent.

"Heard you took down the Needle Atrocity's lieutenant two nights ago." Kalinda kept her voice casual.

Alicia's mouth curved slightly. A spark fell out of her eye and flared bright, the precise color of pain, before stuttering into ash. "I did," she said simply. "There was a lot of fire that night, and the nights here are very long."

"Do you ever worry that you've lost your way, going vigilante?"

"I don't regret it. Do you?"

Kalinda shrugged. "I don't believe in causes, just people."

They looked out over the city. The wind was chilly, and it never let up for more than a moment. Sometimes it smelled of hectic metal, sometimes of corrosion left unchecked.

 _Hit her in the heart,_ the voice had advised her, infallible as always. Instead, Kalinda found herself saying, "I missed you."

Alicia raised an eyebrow. "Missed me, or missed the nights at the bar after work?"

"Well, you know me. Can't keep away from bad beer and good women."

For a moment, she worried that she had pushed too hard, but then Alicia's face eased. It was more beautiful on her than one of her customary fortress smiles. "I don't think we know any good women."

"Diane," Kalinda suggested.

"Which is why she's in Chicago heading a law firm and we're--here."

Alicia didn't mention her children, and Kalinda wasn't going to ask. There was a deep pain there-- _her heart_ \--but tonight was not the night for that answer.

"You seem to have adapted all right," Kalinda said. The things with teeth and tentacles called Alicia by a hundred different names that all meant fire, conflagration, ashes to ruin. She had scoured herself a reputation, but Kalinda happened to know that reputations were lonely things to live by.

As for Kalinda herself, people called her just that--Kalinda. Monsters and victims both. She'd never felt the need for anything else.

"I got sick of it," Alicia said after a while. "People like Colin Sweeney. Neo-Nazis and rapists. The cheese lobby, for goodness' sake. We were everywhere on the map but the place where justice lives."

"Well," Kalinda said, "you have to admit cheese is serious business." More somberly, she said, "How do you know? When you scourge them, how do you know who's guilty? Legwork only takes you so far and monsters don't always wear monstrous faces."

"I know," Alicia said. "That's why I need you."

"Really." Kalinda felt a flush rise to her cheeks. _Too soon,_ she thought. _Too soon._ "Why should I care? The people who come here have chosen it as their home. The old sad stories: debts, drugs, dreams of nights unpolluted by their secret sins. But they always end up in pieces, and they always have to go back to Chicago, where their lives are waiting for them. Why would I interfere?"

Alicia stepped in like a dancer and traced a curve along Kalinda's cheek, stopping just outside the corner of her mouth. "Because I'm asking."

"If this is about--"

"It's not about Peter. Or Will. Or anyone but you." She leaned in. Her breath smelled like roses faintly singed. "If you don't have a cause, fine. Do it for me. Between the two of us we'll see everything that needs seeing, and we'll crown this city in light."

Kalinda kissed her, slow, rapturous, only slightly moist. She had too much respect for fire. Hellsparks blazed up in Alicia's eyes, fluttered down like stars dwindling into darkness.

"Yes," Kalinda breathed. "We'll make this a safe place, the two of us."

The hellsparks dimmed to a red glow, but Kalinda knew that they would return again and again; that so long as the two of them walked the otherworld, the things with teeth and tentacles would have nowhere to hide.

And then Alicia returned her kiss, mouth warm and eager, and Kalinda didn't think of anything but that red heat for a long time.


End file.
